Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Weekend Summary

The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to [email protected] with "Membership" in the subject line.)

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On January 18, 2018, supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) distributed via Telegram a three-minute video in which an armed, masked man, speaking in Russian, announced the establishment of a new force that will operate for ISIS in Russia, especially in the Caucasus, and threatened terrorist attacks against Russia. Judging by his accent, the armed man is likely of Tatar or Bashkiri origin.

The Voice of Islam, the media outlet of the Turkestani Islamic Party (TIP), published a video on January 17, 2018, entitled "The Patience and the Money in Jihad," featuring the Syrian Sunni cleric Abu Ahmad Al-Shami.

On January 17, 2018, Al-Malahem, the media arm of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released a video stressing the danger of revealing the group's secrets over the phone or to other members, saying these actions had caused the death of hundreds of mujahideen.

On January 16, 2018, Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) released an audio statement delivered by the group's leader Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani in which he condemned the Syrian factions for taking part in the Astana negotiations with the Syrian regime in Kazakhstan and accused them of thwarting the revolution and betraying the Syrian people.

On January 12, 2018, the Nouakchott News Agency published a communique issued by the Islamic State (ISIS) branch in Mali, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, led by Adnan Abu Al-Walid Al-Sahrawi, in which it claims responsibility for the attack against a joint patrol of U.S. Special Forces and soldiers of the Nigerian Army that was safeguarding the border area between Niger and Mali on October 4, 2017.

On January 11, 2018, a Syrian opposition Telegram channel posted several photos showing a force from Jaysh Al-Badiyah ("The Desert Army"), which it says was Al-Qaeda's branch in Idlib, Syria, on its way to participate in the ongoing battles between rebel forces and the Syrian military in southern rural Idlib.

Afghan security forces have arrested an elderly man suspected of active involvement in recruiting militants for the Islamic State (ISIS) in eastern Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, according to an Afghan media report.

The media outlet Al-Abd Al-Faqir, which supports the Islamic State (ISIS), published a fictional video on January 17, 2018, with the title: "Conquering Washington – We See It (Quite) Near, They See the (Day) indeed as a Far-Off."

The official Telegram channel of the Shahada news agency of the Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen organization reported on January 17, 2018, that they "activated two roadside bombs against a military convoy of forces from the U.S., Kenya, and the Somali government in the suburbs of the city of Kismayo in southern Somalia, and there were reports of both human and material damage."

On January 17, 2018, the Telegram channel of the Al-Qalam news agency, which belongs to Katibat Al-Ghuraba, a Uyghur group in Syria, posted photos of the group's fighters before they set out on an attack on Syrian regime forces in Tal Al-Shahid, in the southern outskirts of Aleppo.

Speaking in the town of Hattian Bala in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, radical Islamic cleric Maulana Inayatullah Hazarvi said: "Jihad is the peak of Islam and faith [in Islam] is impossible without it."

A Twitter account claiming to belong to Zabihullah Mujahid, one of the official spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban organization), has in the past few days posted photographs of Taliban militants graduating from training in Faryab province.

Mawlawi Abdul Rauf, an alleged leader of the Afghan Taliban who heads a Taliban delegation for peace talks in Turkey, has claimed that the five-member delegation represents all factions of the Taliban, according to an Afghan television channel. Mawlawi Abdul Rauf was a governor during the Taliban regime that ruled in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.